How does the "first link" rule work with the "reasonable surfer patent" when it comes to the main navigation for a website?

[cindyt-17038]

In trying to figure out navigation for a new website, I am struggling with the first link rule vs. the reasonable surfer patent where the first link rule implies that Google "counts" the first link to a page including navigation, and the reasonable surfer patent that implies that navigation links carry less weight than body copy links.

What is the best solution for creating main navigation so that it doesn't take away from the body copy links?

[DanDeceuster]

I think you are misunderstanding the reasonable surfer patent. This means Google can weight links on a page differently based on the likelihood they will be clicked. The random surfer model for the original pagerank formula counted all links on a page the same, so if there were 20 links, each would pass 1/20th of that pages pagerank.

To adapt to the times, that model has changed so that if there are 20 links on the page, and 5 are navigation, 5 are sidebar, 5 are in the body and 5 are in the footer, then Google will probably have the body links pass more than the navigation links, which pass more than the sidebar links, which pass more than the footer links.

Just make your navigation as you normally would. There is nothing about the first link on the page or anything like that which should cause you any worry.

[aarondicks]

My personal technique is to use CSS image replacement to replace my first link, which is usually the logo. The style method is to give the text a negative indent of 9999px, and to set the element's background image to the logo, and use display: block; to keep the whole are clickable.

If you intent to link to all of your pages elsewhere on the page, you could opt to nofollow the navigation, as the other links will pass more relevant text.

Or another option would to be include the links as per usual, and ensure that there is a strong backlink profile to your landing pages, which will eliminate half of this problem entirely.

Aaron

[DanDeceuster]

Straight from Google's Webmaster Guidelines:

Hiding text or links in your content can cause your site to be perceived as untrustworthy since it presents information to search engines differently than to visitors. Text (such as excessive keywords) can be hidden in several ways, including:

• Using white text on a white background
• Including text behind an image
• Using CSS to hide text
• Setting the font size to 0

I would not text indent or anything like that if I were you. Based on what Matt Cutts said last year at SMX Advanced, I would not nofollow any internal links either.

[BlinkWeb]

DO NOT add nofollow to your navigation! It still dilutes the link juice you pass out, it just doesn't actually pass the juice. It is like drilling a hole in your boat. Totally wasted link juice, for internal pages that should be getting link juice. The wasted PR doesnt go anywhere when you do that, it's just wasted.

[Dan-Petrovic]

Amen. Couldn't agree more and looking forward to see this image replacement madness stop for once.

[Dan-Petrovic]

Well said. You and Daniel are spot-on.

[aarondicks]

I'll look into that CSS trick. It's not hiding text, it's just indenting the text, the block level element is still on page.

I remember reading that no follow blog actually, so my mistake.

[dimanyc]

Daniel, thanks for your reply. My question is, what if it's an e-commerce website with 80,000 products, combined under a multi-tier taxonomy, which looks like a NYC subway map? Should owners "do-follow" every link to product pages and static content like "contact us" and "privacy policy"?

[DanDeceuster]

If I understand you correctly, you are putting navigation links to 80k products? That sounds excessive. Look at how they do it at newegg.com and that is a good example of how to implement navigation for a large ecommerce site.

Something to keep in mind here. Internal links mean almost nothing compared to external inbound links. You want to make sure your content is all crawlable and accessible. After that, don't worry about nofollow and silly things about internal links. NEVER nofollow an internal link. Think about what nofollow is, what it means, and why it exists. You are telling Google a page on your site is not trusted. Bad signal.

Worry more about the inbound links to your site than the navigation links. Make sure you have a sitemap and ensure your content is all crawlable and accessible. If that's the case, don't worry yourself over nofollow or other minute navigation optimization.